EU wins planet race

This is already getting plenty of coverage in the mainstream press, but I still find it newsworthy, and wish to cover it here.

After a ten year competition with scientists in the US, today a team of European astronomers and astrophysicists lead by Swiss scientists Michel Mayor and Stephane Udry, operating from the European Southern Observatory at La Silla, Chile, notified the Journal of Astronomy and Astrophysics that they have found the first “Earth like planet” outside of our solar system.

It’s far, far too soon to know for sure whether it has water, or what kind of atmosphere it has, but it is believed likely to have water, and is at least confidently believed to be at an hospitable temperature, conducive to life as we know it.

Whether it has life forms of its own (even merely bacteria/microorganisms), or could simply be a potential future colonization point, it is notable for being in orbit around one of the 100 near-earth stars. This still places it 20 light-years away, a journey far beyond the reach of any human lifetime with any known technology.

It has been speculated by some that we will only become long distance space travelers when we find a way to make our species immortal, and therefore the long periods of travel less relevant. I’m skeptical of the vanity of absolute immortality, but the notion of elongating the human life-span such that, barring terminal illness or tragedy (car wreck, etc.), with a little luck some of us could reach a few hundred years in age. Given the strides that the first world has made in human life-spans in the past century, I don’t think this is inconceivable. That, combined with some inevitable advances in space travel and private sector competition make the idea of planet colonization more within the realm of practical consideration.

Or, put another way, “We’re here to go.”